Executive Coaching, Leadership Training, and Personal Development
Margaret and David recently discussed the topic of graceful (or not) endings. You know the ones: a project ends, a marriage dissolves, or a loved one passes. In this post I share my thoughts on the ending we all face – our death. We can approach that with grace or with dread. The choice is ours. [Read more…]
Join Margaret and Janice as they explore the topic and the science of feeling stuck with guest Britt Frank, a clinician, educator, and trauma specialist. Most people beat themselves up when they feel stuck or unmotivated, but there is science behind our stuck-ness that might invite us into a different relationship with it.
Britt offers some practical tools to navigate challenges. For example, she wants us all to meet the check engine light of the mind and to understand how anxiety serves as a self-protective signal.
Want to learn more? You can read Britt’s blog post about Myths About Workplace Mental Health here.
Britt challenges the listeners to try a tool called the “micro yes.” A micro yes is the smallest action that you can do right now. The idea is to take a small step — like, maybe, a really small step — but that is sustainable and can be done immediately as a technique to move us towards positive change. Her challenge is to incorporate micro yeses into daily life to build momentum and make progress toward larger goals.
here.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe at iTunes, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music Podcasts, or Spotify.
Our theme music is “Curiosity” by Polysorbate Eighty. Composed and produced by Patrick Mather and James Celentano. Performed by Kristen Bussandri. Copyright 2009 Polysorbate Eighty and Kristen Bussandri.
In a world where workplace mental health information is sourced from TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, it can be helpful to pause and sort fact from fiction (though to be fair, social media often provides more accurate information than other sources). Here are my top five workplace mental health myths—and what you can do about them.
Like many things in the zeitgeist, the mental health pendulum seems to have overcorrected. “Leave your feelings at the door” used to be the law of the land when it came to work. The idea that people could (and should) simply shrug off their humanity and grind robotically for 60 hours a week was largely an unquestioned expectation. Now, instead of “leave all of your feelings at the door,” the new ethos in the workplace seems to be “bring all your feelings to work.” While it is a beautiful ideal to imagine a workspace where everyone is skillful at both sharing and receiving difficult information, the trend of “trauma-dumping” at work is contraindicated.
Do you create detailed plans, set goals, and schedule your days to control every aspect of your life?
Do you also find that as much as you try to maintain a sense of predictability, life throws curveballs that can leave you frustrated and unfulfilled?
In this episode, Margaret and David discuss a better approach: setting plans and goals while keeping them loose to be flexible and spontaneous when circumstances do not unfold as you expect.
This requires that you let go of control. Something many managers and leaders would rather avoid doing – at first. Until they realize they are sabotaging themselves, their organization, and everyone around them through micromanagement.
Instead of trying to control every aspect of your life, we encourage you to trust the process of “unfoldment.” When you do, you open yourself to new experiences and opportunities you never imagined possible. You tap into your curiosity, intuition, and creativity, which allows you to innovate.
Of course, embracing the process of unfolding can be scary and uncomfortable.
Please get in touch with one of us if you are ready to experience a sense of surprise, delight, wonder, and joy by letting go of your need for predictability and control. We’d love to help you through our Positive Intelligence Coaching Program.
Do you create detailed plans, set goals, and schedule your days to control every aspect of your life?
Do you also find that as much as you try to maintain a sense of predictability, life throws curveballs that can leave you frustrated and unfulfilled?
A better approach is to set plans and goals while keeping them loose to be flexible and spontaneous when circumstances do not unfold as you expect. [Read more…]
Some time ago, I met with a group of leaders from across North America to discuss the possibility of creating a series of weekend retreats that will travel from city to city across North America over the course of 2018.
[Read more…]
The year was 1959 and a young French anthropologist named Pierre Bourdieu was visiting his home in the foothills of the Pyrenees while on leave from the miliary. He had been focusing his research on far-flung locations in Algeria but he realized during this visit that his own childhood village was just as deserving of an anthropologist’s eye. Although he had known the small town of Bearn his entire life, he had never really seen it. Could he make the familiar feel strange and look at it with the eyes of an outsider?
An opportunity presented itself one day when he went out to visit one of his classmates from primary school who was then a low-ranking clerk in a neighboring town. His friend pulled out a photograph taken of their entire class when Bourdieu and he were children. There were dozens of sepia-toned faces of young boys all the same age and from the same small peasant community. The boys stood in lines wearing the same drab peasant shirts and slacks. The group looked remarkably homogenous, yet Bourdieu’s school friend cast his hand across the photo in dismissive scorn and pronounced half of these young boys “unmarriageable.” The children he was referring to, now grown men, were all the oldest sons in their families. In the agricultural world of Bearn—one that at the time revered primogeniture, the tradition of passing land down through the first-born son—the idea that eldest sons would be unmarriageable didn’t make any sense. More striking was the cruelty with which his friend tossed off the remark. Unmarriageable. He might just as easily have said: Worthless.
Janice and Margaret chat with Homaira Kabir, a leadership coach and Founder and CEO of the Goodbye Perfect Project. They discuss her new book, Goodbye Perfect, and delve into the elements that contribute to a woman’s confidence, highlighting the distinctions between different levels and types of confidence.
Homaira challenges listeners to try the SING exercise during their personal or professional celebrations:
You can read Homaira’s article on our latest blog here.
Her book Goodbye Perfect: How To Stop Pleasing, Proving and Pushing For Others… and Live For Yourself is available to order now.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe at iTunes, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music Podcasts, or Spotify.
If you are enjoying the show, you can help us continue to bring thoughtful content with a one-time contribution. This supports our production costs and keeps the show ad-free. Make a contribution today. When you make a contribution, you will receive unlimited access to some of our most highly-rated online training programs.
Our theme music is “Curiosity” by Polysorbate Eighty. Composed and produced by Patrick Mather and James Celentano. Performed by Kristen Bussandri. Copyright 2009 Polysorbate Eighty and Kristen Bussandri.
(This blog represents the research and area of expertise of the author, a leading expert on the science that underpins women’s confidence and leadership. We hope the men who choose to read this will get something out of it!)
If you’re like a lot of women I meet, you probably wonder what happened to the confidence you once had. And you might be wondering what you can do to build back your confidence to the level it once was.
You’ll remember the days when you felt pretty good about yourself. Things seemed to be under your control—you were doing well, you had time to do things you enjoyed, and you know what, you even liked the way you looked.
And now you’re exhausted and overcommitted.
You compare yourself to others and feel worse about yourself. [Read more…]
David explains the process behind choosing this particular topic and the source material. He also delved into the intriguing paradoxes found in Thomas à Kempis’s writing. Additionally, the team explored the concept of using writing for personal development, even if one doesn’t consider themselves a writer.
David challenges the listeners with a thought-provoking exercise. Divide their age into five sections and then write down the most challenging or “bad” thing that happened during those periods. Next, they should try to view those events from a different perspective and identify the gifts that emerged during or after those difficult times.
You can read an excerpt of David’s latest book on our blog post here.
here.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe at iTunes, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music Podcasts, or Spotify.
If you are enjoying the show, you can help us continue to bring thoughtful content with a one-time contribution. This supports our production costs and keeps the show ad-free. Make a contribution today. When you make a contribution, you will receive unlimited access to some of our most highly-rated online training programs.
Our theme music is “Curiosity” by Polysorbate Eighty. Composed and produced by Patrick Mather and James Celentano. Performed by Kristen Bussandri. Copyright 2009 Polysorbate Eighty and Kristen Bussandri.
